LinkedIn

Oh, how I love LinkedIn! I often speak and write about LinkedIn, as well as provide a great deal of training to help others get the most out of the most powerful professional networking site online. As much as I also adore Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is still the one place to get started building your brand and career online.

Ah, the challenge online. How to appear that you fit in while also appearing to stand out from the crowd. We really work hard to think of just the right words to use to let others know how irresistibly awesome we are. It appears that many others believe they are as irresistible as we are and are using the exact same terms in their LinkedIn profiles.

Rod asks: "I see that I'm able to see some people's full LinkedIn profiles when clicking on their link, but when clicking on the link to my own profile, I see very little information. Do I need to have a paid membership to have everything visible"

If you're a professional or business person, you know you need to be using LinkedIn wisely, right? And, college students, that goes for you, too. If you don't know why it matters or know deep-down in the pit of your stomach that you're really not all that sure what to do with LinkedIn, then this is for you......

So you think LinkedIn isn't as sexy as Twitter, Facebook or other networking sites? I encourage you to think again. If providing the most powerful professional networking and job search platform around is sexy, then I'd say it's pretty sexy.
And, it just got a little sexier in that you can now show off your best assets more prominently. No, I'm not talking about push-up bras; the change I'm talking about allows you to bring more attention to your professional assets.

Over the last few weeks, I have been inundated with holiday cards and greetings of all types. While this is typical at this time of year, this is the first time I received so many automated cards and emails, most of them from people I don't really know.

Do you hear that sound? It's your future knocking. Have you done everything you can to show that you're ready? You've worked extremely hard in school, took all the right classes, grew as a person and a budding professional. With just a bit of work, you can now look as impressive online as you are in real life

So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to LinkedIn, save your information and mark your calendar to remind yourself to do it on a regular basis. This will take only about five minutes total; time well spent in managing your critical online information.

“Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match. Find me a find. Catch me a catch.” Feel free to sing along; come on, you know you know the lyrics. Did we suddenly fall into the middle of a Fiddler On The Roof performance? No, you needn’t change the channel. We’re still here talking about networking. How though, [...]

There was a time when a recommendation from your mother that you were a real catch was enough of an objective opinion to satisfy others' due diligence to determine if you were all thumbs up and downyou claimed to be. Following the time when Mom's praise was enough and prior to today, there was also a time,when customer testimonials printed on marketing brochures were all the evidence we needed to know you were the bee's knees.